Prytaneum
Roast
"Hey Ryuu," I greeted, lifting a hand to wave at her as I approached. I was walking a lot slower than I normally would have, so that Hestia could keep up, and I was pretty sure she was barely half conscious—a consequence of waking up at three in the morning like I now did every day.
"Mr. Jackson," Ryuu returned, eyes slowly dropping to the goddess at my side. To Ryuu's credit, she didn't seem to question why Hestia was here, just like she didn't question a lot of things. Instead, she simply inclined her head slowly. "You must be Lady Hestia. Good morning."
"Yeah," I said, smiling apologetically. "She wanted to meet you."
Ryuu glanced towards me out of the corner of an eye and nodded slightly, seeming to piece everything together from those simple words.
"Understandable," Ryuu said, voice tinged with regret. "I admit, I was afraid our rendezvouses might be perceived as improper."
Uh. Or maybe not. The thing with Ryuu is that she was so hard to read and yet she waffled between understanding things completely and just going off into the distance.
"No," I denied at once. "Um, Ryuu, that's not…I think you're getting confused again—"
"Oi, Ryuu," Hestia interrupted me, the aura of a goddess drawing all eyes to her. "I guess I'll get straight to the point, then. What intentions do you have, rendezvousing with my Percy?"
"I apologize, Lady Hestia," Ryuu said. "It was not my intention to cause you any worry. I assure you that, despite how inappropriate it might seem for a man and a woman of our ages to meet in seclusion and the circumstances, I would not do anything untoward with Syr's future husband. As Syr's best friend and future bridesmaid, especially, I will be careful to avoid anything that might cause misunderstandings."
At once, Hestia's aura and ire seemed to spike, spreading through our meeting place as an almost tangible thing that seemed to press against my skin. Slowly, I closed my eyes.
It seemed to me like she was causing some misunderstandings right now.
"…Percy," Hestia asked, voice sounding abruptly infuriated. "Could you perhaps explain precisely what she's talking about? Who is this Syr and when did you get engaged? And, perhaps more importantly, why have I not heard about this until now?"
…That registered as true? Really, Ryuu? In hindsight, I really wasn't sure what I expected, but…come on.
"Maybe I should clarify before this gets out of hand," I suggested, raising my voice quickly and forcing a smile. Turning stiffly, I gave my friend a somewhat stiff smile and then spoke. "Ryuu. I may have gotten a lead concerning Evilus from a really suspicious maybe friend. Supposedly, there's an exchange going on in the Dungeon concerning some important item that we maybe, sorta, kinda, really don't want them to have. I think the guy can be trusted, but I can admit I might be wrong and that the circumstances and his plan are somewhat questionable. Right off the bat, I'll tell you that we don't know anything for sure yet. We don't know exactly who might be attacking or when, where, and how. The guy involved wants me there as support, to help draw fire away from whoever's making the actual exchange, and I wanted to ask if you'd have my back—and Hestia is a little worried about me wandering into the Dungeon to hunt down evil cultists and wants to make sure you're a responsible adult."
Ryuu blinked mildly before giving a slow nod.
"I see," She said. "My apologies. It seems it was I who misunderstood."
"Yeah," I replied. "Getting to that. Hestia. I'm not engaged. Syr is a friend of mine who works at the same bar Ryuu does and we often eat together and she's great and fun to hang out with, but we are not getting married. We've known each other for less than a month and my mom taught me better than to rush something like this. Now, if there should come a time when I am getting married to anyone, I will tell you immediately, since you're both my goddess and my friend. But that time is not now. This is just a misunderstanding."
Hestia squinted at me and then at Ryuu, apparently getting mixed messages from the two of us. Grasping desperately for some kind of silver lining to…this, I noted that it was actually a pretty informative example of the limits of a god's lie detector—namely, that it was a lie detector, not a truth detector. Even if they could see through any lies that came their way, after all, that didn't mean they would hear the objective truth. If whoever was speaking to them honestly thought what he was saying was the truth, it would register to the gods as such, which could cause confusion where people's truths conflicted. Like, if you questioned each and every witness to a car accident, you'd probably get a couple dozen different stories from as many people, but they weren't necessarily lying, they were just wrong.
It was good to know and also a little worrying. If someone like, oh, me were to find himself put on trial by the gods—again—and someone accused me of something, as long as they thought I did it, they'd seem to be telling the truth—but how far does that go? When does something start registering as true or false to a god? I mean, if you think about it, if the standard for false was something like 'know it's not true,' there were a lot of things you could consider true, simply because they hadn't be proven false. If truths and lies were based on belief rather than fact, then they basically only existed in people's minds.
And if there was one thing I knew for sure, it's that people can change their mind. So if I found myself in a situation where I was telling a god one truth and someone else was telling them another, what decides who the gods believe?
In Hestia's case, it was probably just the fact that she knew and liked me. To her, my truth just had more weight than Ryuu's, which was good for me this time, but—
"Percy, can I talk to you for a moment?" Hestia asked, interrupting my thoughts and looking towards me and gesturing away.
"Sure," I said, glad for the distraction from the thoughts. Was I being pessimistic by expecting something like that to get me in trouble one of these days and dwelling on it? Or was I just being realistic? I wasn't sure, so I just followed Hestia a bit away and raised an eyebrow as I looked over a shoulder. "Not to question you or anything, Hestia, but if you're trying to keep Ryuu from hearing what you have to say about her, you might want to go a bit further away. Down the street, maybe."
I didn't bother lowering my voice because it made no real difference, and Hestia grimaced, shaking her head.
"It's just the principle of the thing, Percy," She said, glancing towards Ryuu and then back to me, apparently deciding she didn't care. "Besides. You would just tell her whatever we said."
I smiled at Hestia at that, kind of glad she knew me so well. It saved time.
"Tell me honestly," She continued. "Can you really trust this woman, Percy?"
"Yes," I said without hesitation. "Sure, Ryuu can be a bit…like that, but she's a good person and a strong warrior. I trust her with my life."
"That's…not what I meant," Hestia said, sighing slightly. "You can see it too, right?"
I knew what she meant, because I could. Ryuu was a hard person to read at the best of times and nearly impenetrable the rest, but ever since I'd found out more about her—about the people she'd lost and the things she'd done—there's been something about her that I could see occasionally, if I looked at her closely or saw her out of the corner of my eye. Maybe it was nothing or maybe I was projecting, but I'd never quite managed to convince myself that was the case.
Maybe because I saw a lot of it in the mirror, too.
"Yes," I said again, smiling at Hestia to assuage the worry I was sure she must have felt. "But isn't it fine? Because…Ryuu's my friend, she's a good person, and…she's like me. So I just can't leave her be, you know? And even if friends are the type of people you can tell anything, they're the kind of people it's fine to keep a few secrets from to. So…is it okay, Hestia?"
She stared at me for a long moment before exhaling slowly.
"You'll be careful?" She asked.
"We will," I said.
"And you'll take Welf's magic sword with you, just in case?" She pressed.
"We will," I said again. "Always good to have a backup plan or something, right? Even if it's just shoot our way out."
"But you promise you won't let yourselves get dragged into anything too big for you to handle?" She demanded. "Even if it's something like…"
She gestured vaguely at Ryuu and I.
"What's the point of friends if you can't drag them into your problems every now and then?" I asked, but smiled at the look she sent me. "But both of us have things we have to come back to. I promised, didn't I?"
"You did," She said sternly. "I won't let you forget it, either! You made a promise to a goddess that you'd come back no matter what."
"And I will," I promised again. "No matter what. Mrs. O'Leary's fully rested, too, so we can get out the moment we have to. Besides, you said you'd know if I was alive or not, right?"
"As long as you have my Falna," She replied, nodding. "Then…as long as that's true…as long as you'll come back, I'll allow it. You can go anywhere, as long as you return."
"Thank you," I told her, smiling again. "I'll see you when I get back?"
Hestia nodded quickly, blinking quickly and turning away.
"I'll be going home then, Percy," She said, waving over her shoulder. "And…I'll be waiting."
"Later, Hestia," I told her, instead of saying goodbye.